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Robert Rhee Opening at KCCLA

November 15, 2019

Korea Arts Foundation of America (KAFA) & Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles (KCCLA) proudly present the “The 16th Korea Arts Foundation of America Award Recipient Exhibition: All of the Above,” which will take place from November 8th to November 22nd, 2019 at the Korean Cultural Center Art Gallery, located at 5505 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90036.

The Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles (KCCLA) is a hybrid space with multiple forms of cultural programs. Operated by the Korean government’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the KCCLA has a broad mandate: it offers Korean language classes, cultural heritage workshops and culinary seminars, job fairs, traditional dance workshops, Taekwondo programs, and curated exhibitions on Korean history, popular culture, and visual art.
The populations served by the KCCLA’s range of offerings is equally eclectic: primary schools, artists associations, the LAPD and US Army, researchers and universities, Los Angeles municipal governments, tourists and more. One need only peruse the KCCLA’s calendar of offerings to get a sense of it as a well-used multipurpose space.
Robert Rhee’s solo exhibition, “All of the Above,” takes its cues from the KCCLA and is interested in the gestural qualities of shared use and negotiation. Conceived of as a sequence of formations around the KCCLA’s most shared resource—a fleet of folding chairs—the exhibition responds to the processes of the space, which will serve as both a gallery and a Korean language classroom.
The mobile architecture of the folding chair enacts states of attendance: gathering, resting, migrating, as well as being absent. The shared space of the folding chair is not repurposed for the exhibition but rather, in the spirit of the KCCLA, more actively multipurposed and presented in its mixed use.
Rhee’s sculptures utilize cultivated materials and the latent human gestures they carry. In Occupations of Uninhabited Space gourds are grown inside rigid forms which forecast and reroute their growth. The negotiations between gourd and forecast arise out of the cultivation process and take on significance in relation to it. Typecasts visualizes the farming and propagation of stable types as expended energy.

Using a modified burnout casting process this new series of bronze sculptures draws a connection between casting and cultivating. The typecast names a kind of cultivation that feeds individuals back into their types. The term ’typecast’ is borrowed from performance and describes the repeated casting of an actor in the same type of role. Attending the point-of-view of the typecast actor, Rhee focuses his attention on internal dialogue, constructed continuity, releasement. The exhibition is open to the public and the show will run until November 22nd, 2019. All of the Above is the 16th Korea Arts Foundation of America (KAFA) Award Recipient Exhibition. KAFA is a non-profit, public benefit organization in the Los Angeles area with a mission to promote creativity, research, and exhibitions in the arts. Funding and support for this exhibition has been provided by KAFA and the Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles.

Robert Rhee (American, b. 1982, Bronx, New York) lives and works in Seattle. His work has been exhibited nationally at the Portland Museum of Art, Oregon; the Hunterdon Art Museum, New Jersey; White Columns, New York; the Fort Worth Contemporary Gallery, Texas; and the Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles, California and internationally at the 10th Berlin Biennale, KW Institute for Art, Germany; and the Ilmin Museum of Art, South Korea. In 2018 he was awarded the Korea Arts Foundation of America Award for Visual Art and was nominated for a Stranger Genius award in 2016. He received his BA from Yale University and MFA from Columbia University, and is currently an Assistant Professor at Cornish College of the Arts.

Robert Rhee at the Portland Art Museum

February 15, 2019

KAFA’s 2018-2019 Awardee, Robert Rhee is in a group exhibition titled the map is not the territory at the Portland Art Museum which is up until May 5th, 2019.

The map is not the territory is part of a triennial series featuring regional artists exploring place and boundaries. This inaugural exhibition focuses along the eastern edge of the Pacific Ocean stretching from Oregon through Washington and Vancouver, B.C., up to Alaska. The artists in this exhibition seek to reconceive and reimagine the Northwest. What does it mean to make art in this region today, and what are the immediate inspirations and pressing concerns that drive each artist’s work?

The exhibition title, the map is not the territory, derives from a remark by philosopher Alfred Korzybski, expressing the essential distinction between an object and its representation—or, more broadly, between our beliefs and the underlying reality. Through the field of general semantics, Korzybski’s intent was to improve the ways people interact with one another and the environment, particularly through critical use of words and other symbols in connection to our living experiences. In this vein, each artist has expanded their own practice and ideas while engaging with each other in preparation for the map is not the territory.

Organized by Grace Kook-Anderson, The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art, in collaboration with the Museum’s education department.

From the KAFA Archive

February 15, 2019

Here is an image of the founding board members of KAFA in 1992 with jurors Henry Hopkins, Suzanne Muchnic, Josine Ianco-Starrels, and our first awardee Yun-Dong Nam.

The year 1992 was a historic and tumultuous year in Los Angeles. It was the year of the 1992 Uprisings (formerly referred to as the 1992 Riots). KAFA carried on with its duties, selecting an awardee and mounting an exhibition of his work. These photographs offer a glimpse at the complexities of conducting business during that time.


(top image: left to right, Dr. Indong Oh, Chairman of the Board of the Korean American Coalition and KAFA, Jessie Jackson; bottom image: Mr. Haksik Son, Selection Committee Chair, Yun-dong Nam, Awardee, andDr. Indong Oh, President)

February Board Meeting

February 15, 2019

The KAFA Board convened for its bi-annual board meeting this February 7th at the Oxford Hotel. Thank you to our dedicated board members who attended the meeting and sent in their proxy!

From the KAFA Archive

February 15, 2019

In February 1992, KAFA was featured in the 23rd Volume of “The Ladies Joong-Ang.” Enjoy these images from the magazine, which our current President Mrs. Oh saved all of these years! KAFA gave its first grant to Yun-Dong Nam in 1992.

 

(pictured left to right Mrs. Kyungja Oh and Mrs. Sookie Huskey at Hoon Kwack’s studio)

Congratulations Robert Rhee!

May 21, 2018

KAFA congratulates its 2018 Awardee, Robert Rhee. We had a lovely press conference at KCC and artist talk at KAFA Board Members Dr. and Mrs. Wilson Park’s home in Hancock Park. One of our jurors, Jan Tumlir joined us.

KAFA Board Meeting at CMay Gallery

June 5, 2017

On May 24, 2017, the KAFA Board of Directors convened at CMay Gallery in the Pacific Design Center. Thank you so much, May Chung, for hosting. Many items were discussed, including 2016 Awardee Jennifer Moon’s upcoming exhibition at the Korean Cultural Center November 3-16,2017.

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KAFA Board Meeting

November 30, 2016

Board Meeting and Dinner at Hyon Chough’s Home

November 30, 2016  

 

Studio Visit with Jennifer Moon

November 2, 2016

KAFA Board Members visited the studio of Jennifer Moon (2016 Awardee) on November 2, 2016. It was a fantastic opportunity to learn more about Moon’s art practice.